This is a variation on a “Where were you when JFK was shot?” experience, from the rural mid-hills Nepal Himalayas, in the early PC days (daze!)…

I was newly arrived at my PC post, a district headquarters town in the remote mid-Himalayan hills of Nepal.

As it was night time in Nepal when President Kennedy was shot, we heard the news only the next morning, Saturday, November 23, a government holiday. We were awakened early by loud knocking on our door. When we opened it, we were surprised to see most of the district office staff standing thereto tell us the bad news and express their condolences to the only Americans they knew. Some of them, we realized, had walked on mountain trails for several hours from home to come to us. We had had the impression that America was too far away and our leaders were little known to the locals. We were wrong. They had heard it on Radio Nepal, and were genuinely shocked and aggrieved.

Immediately we turned on our shortwave Transoceanic radio to find, hoping to find a Voice of America broadcast in English. But reception that day was so bad that it took some time for us to find a scratchy VOA broadcast relayed through a station in South Africa. For the first 40 minutes we heard only funereal music. Only at the top of the hour did we finally heare the somber announcement.

Two few weeks later while trekking in the hills we saw a farmer far off up a hill tilling his field. As we came up the trail he dropped his tools and rushed down to the trail to express his condolences. As he spoke he teared up. The sincerity and concern of the Nepalese, even in such a remote place, impressed us.

On that Saturday, November 23, another PCV who lived in a village some hours east of us was trekking to our house, alone and unawares, to spend the weekend. Along the way, some villagers tried telling him about Kennedy’s death, but his Nepali was so shaky (so early in our tenure in Nepal) that he didn’t comprehend. And when he finally thought he understand the words, he refused to believe it. After a while, in the last village before ours, an English-speaking school teacher approached and told him the news…

Jump ahead three decades — I was on a consultancy with some Nepalese foresters when one of them said he lived near that village and knew that school. He was only four or five years old at the time, he said, and on that morning he hgad followed his elder brother to the school to attend a soccer match. When he got there, he saw a tall foreigner sitting on a bench near the school gate. “Why is the American so sad?” he asked. The brother replied: “He is crying because his Raja is dead.” #

Hi Lynn, Thanks for your comments about Pres Kennedy. I was one of the early Peace Corps Volunteers who had responded to Pres Kennedy’s call to service, and was in West Africa when I heard the news, late at night, of the attempt on his life. There were two other PCVs living with me, and I still remember the muggy humid night air, the squeaky ceiling fan going, the yellow light bulb, and the looks on faces, whilst the BBC Overseas Service, broadcast first with uncertainities, then finally, hours later, the confirmed information, that Pres Kennedy was dead. I still remember the crackling short-wave radio signal. First the tones, and then through the static: “This is London calling. . .” Being out there in the middle of Africa, we felt so suddenly alone. So sad. But closer to home we had our own hero, George Carter, the Peace Corps Rep in Accra, and we knew that George would know what to do.

Then, early in the morning, after only a few hours sleep, our cook, a Nigerian named “Johnson”, pulled back the mosquito netting and woke me up to say “Dey be beeg mahn out deh”. I got up and went out and there was a delegation from the nearby village of Saltpond (this was on the Ghana coast), in their Sunday best. They had been up all night listening to the BBC also. They knew I was an American. They read the newspapers. They weren’t anybody’s dummies. Their spokesman said, “We want to express our sadness at the death of your Paramount Chief”. I didn’t know what to say. I should have given a speech, but I didn’t know what to say. I thanked them, assured them that in America there was a Vice-president there to take charge; and they disappeared back toward the village. Later, I broke down in tears. I was staring out the window when Johnson brought in a steaming cup of coffee. I thanked him, which was all that needed to be said.

That morning there were no Ghanaians, nor Nigerians, nor English, nor Americans. Only a disoriented, uncertain lot of human beings, who hoped that peace in this world would not be extinguished. I would learn many years later that the Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, on learning of Kennedy’s death, also had been moved to tears. I would learn then, a long time ago, that foreign policy is one thing, but HOPE is something very different. And HOPE is what sustains people.

The Peace Corps had been the centerpiece of Pres Kennedy’s message, even more than he probably realized, and which had inspired people all around the globe, and I determined then that I would do my best to see that it succeeded — and still do today.

Best wishes, John Turnbull Lower Canoncito, New Mexico

I appreciate the work of those writers, especially those who have put forth such an effort to write about the Peace Corps experiences in ways that I could recognize but never describe.